February heating bills to drop 31 percent, Xcel says
Denver Business Journal
February heating bills are poised to drop 31 percent from January's figure for residential customers, and 35 percent for typical small-business customers, Xcel Energy Inc. said Wednesday.
Xcel (NYSE: XEL) is based in Minneapolis. It is Colorado's largest utility serving 1.2 million natural gas customers and 1.3 million electricity customers.
February's bills are expected to shrink, compared to January's bills, because the February commodity price is lower and customers are expected to use less natural gas, the utility said. But February 2006 bills are still expected to be almost 30 percent higher than February 2005 bills, due to the higher cost of natural gas this year.
Xcel on Wednesday asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission for permission to drop the natural gas commodity price it charges customers by 21 percent in February compared to January. The request is nearly certain to be granted, because per PUC rules, Xcel doesn't take a profit on the sale of natural gas, but passes the cost through to customers on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Xcel wants to drop the unit price of natural gas to 81 cents per therm in February, compared to $1.03 per therm in January. Xcel makes such requests every month so that the cost of natural gas for consumers closely tracks the commodity's market price.
Typical residential customers are expected to decrease consumption by 18 percent in February compared to January, so their overall natural gas bills would decrease to $125.83, based on consumption of 119.9 therms. This compares to $183.34 in January on use of 146.6 therms, the utility said.
Typical small-business customers are expected to use 22 percent less natural gas in February compared to January. Typical natural gas bills would then be $569.31, based on consumption of 569.9 therms, compared to bills in January of $881.34 on use of 730.1 therms, the utility said.
But while February's bills will be smaller compared to January's bills, they're still higher than those posted in Feb. 2005.
In February 2005, typical residential customer bills were $98.22, or 28 percent lower than what's projected for next month, based on the same consumption of 119.9 therms. Typical small-business customer bills were $438.15 in February 2005, or 30 percent lower than projected for next month, also based on the same use of 569.9 therms, the utility said.
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